Conservation & Environment

GOLETA, Calif. (AP) — May 20, 2015 — An oil spill from a ruptured onshore pipeline that fouled beaches and threatened wildlife along a scenic stretch of the California coast spread across 9 miles of ocean Wednesday and officials said up to 105,000 gallons may have leaked out.

Up to a fifth of that amount – 21,000 gallons – reached the sea, according to estimates.

Federal regulators were investigating the leak as workers in protective suits raked and shoveled stinky black goo off the beaches, and boats towed booms into place to corral the two slicks off the Santa Barbara coast. More than 6,000 gallons had been collected by cleanup crews.

The coastline was the scene of a much larger spill in 1969 – the largest in U.S. waters at the time – that is credited with giving rise to the American environmental movement.

The chief executive of the company that runs the pipeline, Plains All American Pipeline LP, was at the site of the spill Wednesday and apologized for it.

“We deeply, deeply regret that this incident has occured at all,” Chairman and CEO Greg L. Armstrong said at a news conference. “We apologize for the damage that it’s done to the wildlife and to the environment and we’re very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that it’s caused on the citizens and the visitors to this area.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

May 20, 2015 — The North Carolina Sea Grant organization hosted a unique taste testing dinner Wednesday night at Bistro By The Sea in Morehead City. The menu featured lionfish as the key ingredient.

Lionfish are the most dominant predators in the North Carolina marine waters thanks to their poisonous spines. They typically prey on popular commercial fish like grouper and snapper– but this posing a problem for commercial fisherman.

Now the commercial fish are becoming less available and the exotic lionfish population continues to grow.

“What we want to be able to do here is to eradicate or at least manage that population and the only way to do that is to harvest them– right now you spear them but we’re looking for commercial opportunities,” says Barry Nash, North Carolina Sea Grant.

Read the full story from WCTI 12

May 21, 2015 — Four college buddies on an angling trip in the Long Island Sound this week came home with one heck of a fishing story — and the video to back it up.

Schofield Campbell, Charlie DeNatale, Ryan Bard and Brendan Miner were fishing off the coast of Fairfield, Connecticut, when they say they spotted a group of light gray forms underwater.

Those forms turned out to be whales, and they seemed to be following the boat. Video shows the marine mammals approach the boat and swim alongside it, breaching several times before disappearing back into the sea.

Read the full story and watch the video from NBC New York

May 20, 2015 — A New York creek has a vampire problem.

“They’re a couple feet long, very, very different. They are fish, no connection to eels, though they do look similar,” reported WKBW‘s Matt Bové.

They’re called sea lampreys, though it’s easy to see why some folks refer to them as vampire fish. They’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years, though their presence in waters near the Great Lakes is a little more recent.

Read the full story and watch the video from AOL.com

May 14, 2015 — The following was released by the MIT Sea Grant Program:

Ocean acidification is not just a buzzword for the men and women who make their living harvesting shellfish off the coast of New England. The pH of coastal water directly affects the health of shellfish and that has a real and immediate impact on the livelihood of fishermen.

The Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN) coordinated an Ocean Acidification Stakeholder Workshop. The workshop brought together scientists, state and federal regulators, non-profit groups, and leaders in fishing communities across Cape Cod and the Islands to learn from one another about the local effects of coastal acidification. Held in Barnstable, Mass., this was the second in a series of workshops across New England. You can read meeting outcomes from the first workshop, held in Walpole, Maine. Further workshops are planned for Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the north shore of Massachusetts.

Sea Grant programs have been involved in these workshops from the beginning, allowing NECAN to leverage their local connections with stakeholders. This is an ongoing partnership, Maine Sea Grant Extension Educator Esperanza Stancioffhelped plan the first workshop and MIT Sea Grant Coastal Ecologist Juliet Simpsonand Woods Hole Sea Grant/Cape Cod Cooperative Extension Agent Diane Murphywere on the planning committee for the Cape Cod workshop. Stakeholder workshops like this help clarify existing needs and give researchers context to prioritize new research areas.

Ocean acidification is defined as a decrease in global ocean pH caused by the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), but isn’t the only acidification issue coastal fisherman face. Localized high acidity events have an immediate impact on the health and survival of marine life along the coast. The effects of global ocean acidification must be considered in the context of local environmental stressors that are occurring right now.

In the open ocean, the trend of increasing acidity caused by increasing atmospheric CO₂ has been well documented; coastal acidification, however, isn’t as easy to measure, or define. Along the coast natural processes change quickly; freshwater inputs from land run off, tides, strong winds, and currents are among the many factors affect the acidity of the water.

Increased nutrients in runoff directly related to coastal populations is still a major water quality concern for Cape Cod and the Islands. The algal blooms that result from the increased nutrients eventually decompose, coating once sandy bottoms in thick black muck. Not only does the change in bottom type affect the settling of shellfish larvae, but as that muck decomposes it produces CO₂ and that CO₂ is taken up by the surrounding water causing the water to become more acidic. Scientists often talk of a global ocean pH shift from 8.2 in preindustrial times to its current 8.1, and even though this represents a 30% increase in ocean acidity, it might not sound like much to someone who runs a hatchery on the Cape. Managers routinely experience a pH of 7.5 or lower in waters off Cape Cod. If instead, researchers focus their discussions on how global acidification will increase the frequency and length of drops in local pH, the consequences of ocean acidification become more relevant for local aquaculture operations.

The wild caught shellfish industry is, and always has been, unpredictable. That is even more apparent today where aquaculturists are dealing with significant ongoing water quality issues. Hatcheries provide a critical level of control, because, without healthy seed, there is no harvest. Hatchery owners are able to monitor water quality daily, including pH, and have been adjusting these water parameters as needed for generations. Different management techniques, such as only taking in water during high tides or taking water from the top of the water column, have allowed them to keep the pH in a healthy range for larval shellfish. Access to a hatchery on the Cape is especially important when we consider the long-term impacts of ocean and coastal acidification because local hatcheries aren’t just more economical for fishermen in the area; hatcheries provide seed that is acclimated to local conditions, and therefore has a higher likelihood of survival.

Local coastal acidification must be considered when we discuss the effects of global ocean acidification. Fishermen and aquaculturists from Cape Cod and the Islands are seeing real impacts from decreasing water quality in our bays and estuaries. To what extent ocean acidification is currently making these issues worse, we don’t yet know. And while large-scale CO₂ emissions may be beyond your control, helping to improve coastal water quality is something you can do. The water quality of New England’s bays and estuaries is a community issue that can be improved through hard work by local people.

For more information about ocean and coastal acidification, or about the stakeholder workshops, please visit the NECAN website: http://www.neracoos.org/necan or contact Cassie Stymiest, cassie@neracoos.org.

May 14, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:

There is an approximately 90% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere summer 2015, and a greater than 80% chance it will last through 2015.

By early May 2015, weak to moderate El Niño conditions were reflected by above-average sea surface temperatures (SST) across the equatorial Pacific (Fig. 1), and by the corroborating tropical atmospheric response. The latest weekly Niño indices were +1.2oC in the Niño-4 region, +1.0oC in the Niño-3.4 region, and +1.2oC and +2.3oC in the Niño-3 and Niño-1+2 regions, respectively (Fig. 2). Subsurface temperature anomalies remained substantially above average (Fig. 3), partly in response to a downwelling oceanic Kelvin wave, which resulted in strong positive subsurface anomalies across the central and eastern Pacific (Fig. 4). This anomalous warmth has subsequently persisted in association with El Niño-related ocean-atmosphere coupling. This coupling includes enhanced convection over the central equatorial Pacific (Fig. 5), along with persistent low-level westerly wind anomalies over the western and central equatorial Pacific and persistent upper-level easterly wind anomalies over the central Pacific. Also, the equatorial Southern Oscillation Index (EQSOI) remained negative during the month. Collectively, these features reflect weak to moderate strength El Niño conditions.

Nearly all models predict El Niño (3-month values of the Niño-3.4 index 0.5oC or greater) to continue throughout 2015, and many are also predicting SST anomalies to increase during the next several months (Fig. 6). These forecasts are supported by the continuation of positive subsurface temperature anomalies, enhanced convection near the Date Line, and the persistence of low-level westerly wind anomalies. Given these factors, it is likely that SST anomalies will continue to increase in the coming months. However, model forecast skill tends to be lower during the Northern Hemisphere spring, which somewhat limits confidence in these forecasts. Therefore, there remains considerable uncertainty about how strong this event may become. In summary, there is an approximately 90% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere summer 2015, and a greater than 80% chance it will last through 2015 (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome for each 3-month period).

This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA’s National Weather Service, and their funded institutions. Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on the Climate Prediction Center web site (El Niño/La Niña Current Conditions and Expert Discussions). Forecasts are also updated monthly in the Forecast Forumof CPC’s Climate Diagnostics Bulletin. Additional perspectives and analysis are also available in an ENSO blog. The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for 11 June 2015. To receive an e-mail notification when the monthly ENSO Diagnostic Discussions are released, please send an e-mail message to: ncep.list.enso-update@noaa.gov.

May 13, 2015 — A deadly recipe is brewing that threatens the survival of countless creatures throughout Earth’s oceans. For years, we’ve known that the oceans absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. But with high carbon emissions worldwide, this silent killer is entering our seas at a staggering rate, raising the ocean’s acidity.

Read the full story and watch the preview from NOVA